If you step with your left foot and everyone else is stepping with their right, the whole team is thrown off. Failing to keep up the tempo clapping, and everything is off.

In its first season as a team, the Brien McMahon High School drill team did just that. Even with a lack of competitions, a number of girls quitting and no funding from the school, the 10-member team still brought home the first place trophy at the Butterfly Project Fund 2013 Step Showcase at City Hall last weekend.

"I just like how they banded together with each other. At the end of the day, they're all friends with each other," Gabrielle Pierre-Louis, the team's manager, said at the team's post-season party Tuesday. "Every time they see each other in the hall, they always say, 'Hi' to each other."

The team, almost entirely freshmen and sophomores, many of whom go to the Center for Global Studies (CGS), had their first performance at the Brien McMahon homecoming game tailgate and at halftime at basketball games. When they started, the team had 17 members and the girls gave their first performance a 7 out of 10.

Its second performance, at halftime of the Brien McMahon-Norwalk High School basketball game, got an 11 out of 10, even as girls started to quit. They began to pull together, putting in the work at their twice weekly, hour and a half long practices, after which coaches Danyelle Williams and Camile Sneed had to drive some of the CGS students home to Bridgeport or Stratford.

"I think we get a lot done in our practices. We work hard, but we have fun while we do it," said Malaysia Douglas, a sophomore on the team.

Last weekend was the team's first and only competition, a fundraiser for the Butterfly Project Fund, which awards scholarships to Connecticut high schoolers. Teams came from as close as Stamford, with Westhill High School, and as far away as the Bronx, N.Y. and the Boston area.

"When they said the third place team, we thought that was the best team. I looked at Ms. Williams and said, 'Well, that was fun,'" said Sneed. "Then they announced the second place team, and then the first place team was Brien McMahon."

After a successful first season -- the big, purple trophy the team won sits in Brien McMahon's front office -- Williams said the big hurdle for the team is getting money. Competitions are few and far between and Williams said she only found last weekend's by searching on Google. She paid the entry fee out of pocket.

"We did not have a budget. Everything we purchased out of our own pockets or we fundraised," said Williams. "Moving forward we're going to have to work hard to raise money."

But Tuesday, the focus was not on the future, but what the team had accomplished. Team member DeTonya Feliciano said the drill team was more than just a team.

"This isn't something you just do," she said. "This isn't something where you just come and stomp your feet. This is something you commit to."